bolus
(ˈbəʊləs)
Pl. boluses: 7 bolus, 7–8 bolus's, 8–9 bolusses.
[a. mod.L. bōlus, a. Gr. βῶλος clod, lump of earth.]
1. Med. a. A medicine of round shape adapted for swallowing, larger than an ordinary pill. (Often used somewhat contemptuously.)
| 1603 Florio Montaigne (1634) 554, I will not have a Bolus, or a glister. 1681 tr. Willis' Rem, Med. Wks. Voc., Bolus, is a medicine made up into a thick substance to be swallow'd not liquid, but taken on a knives point. 1751 Shenstone Wks. & Lett. III. 178, I have been taking saline draughts and bolus's. 1832 A. M. Porter Hungar. Bro. v. 53 Physic him to death with pills and boluses. |
| fig. 1637 Earl of Monmouth Malvezzi's Romvlvs 229 Cruell actions are so many bolus, which are never better taken than when wrapt up in gold. 1780 Cowper Lett. 3 May, Swallowing such boluses as I send you. 1878 Black Green Past. iii. 23 Resolved not to swallow your Home Rule bolus. |
b. A single dose of a drug, contrast medium, etc., introduced rapidly into a blood-vessel.
| 1967 Jrnl. Appl. Physiol. XXII. 497/2 A single bolus of 1.5–2.5µc 84RbCl was injected rapidly into the superior vena cava. 1977 Lancet 20 Aug. 376/1 sGaw [sc. specific airways conductance] was measured 5 min after intravenous salbutamol sulphate (25 µg boluses) up to a cumulative dose of 300 µg. 1980 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 29 Mar. 922/2 All treatment was stopped and a bolus of 10ml of 10% calcium gluconate given. |
2. A small rounded mass of any substance.
| 1782 A. Monro Compar. Anat. (ed. 3) 23 The bolus would be in danger of falling out of the mouth. 1835 T. Hook G. Gurney (1850) I. i. 3 A round mirror, encircled with gilt boluses. 1867 F. Francis Angling i. (1880) 9 A barley-meal bolus is the bait for roach. 1881 Sat. Rev. No. 1320, 206 One leaden bolus of the old ounce-of-lead pattern. |
3. A kind of clay;
= bole2 1.
| 1682 Grew Anat. Plants 242 Bolus's are the Beds, or as it were, the Materia prima, both of opacous Stones, and Metals. 1863 Baring-Gould Iceland xii. 210 The soil is composed of soft bolus full of splinters of trachyte. |
Hence
bolus-ways,
-wise,
adv., as a bolus.
| 1689 Moyle Sea Chyrurg. Pref., If the Patient cannot take a Medecine in one form (as Bolus-waies). |